Guest Post: The Fatal Timidity Of The Corporate Media

Want to reverse the decline of the media? then stop worshipping corporate profits and start worshipping skepticism and a strong voice for truth, however inconvenient it might be to the Status Quo.

Lost in all the hand-wringing over the corporate (mainstream) media's decline is a key cause of the decline: the MSM no longer publishes or airs anything that challenges the Status Quo. The timidity of the corporate media knows no bounds. The iconic Washington Post now makes its corporate bread off its ownership of a diploma mill of the sort that it should deplore.

In web-based corporate media, "journalism" has been distilled down to churning out lists: the 11 best cities to do your $50 million IPO in, the 9 most adorable dog breeds, 7 reasons why we hate corporate web-based media (you'll never see that list), etc.The print media has always lived off advertising. What's changed is the overt slavishness of the media toward its advert masters.

If you flip through a corporate mainstream media publication from the late 1960s, for example LIFE magazine, you will see plenty of adverts. But you will also see uncompromising stories about alternative lifestyles, about demonstrators against the Status Quo being beaten, arrested and thrown in temporary gulags, and other stories which bluntly called the entire machinery of the Status Quo into question.

The deal was this: the media was relevant, so people wanted to read it. Advertisers who wanted to reach this audience had to suck it up and advertise regardless of whether they approved of the content.

A near-monopoly certainly aided the corporate media pre-cable TV and Internet: there were a handful of national print media outlets, two big newspapers per major city, a town newspaper in smaller burgs, and three national TV networks. Advertisers had little choice about where to place their advert dollars.

Now that advertisers have a vast spectrum of choice, they have the upper hand. The media outlets have to sell their audience to advertisers: please give us money, because our audience is huge, or targeted, and oh yes, in all cases special.

The media, corporate and non-traditional alike, could count on subscriptions to pay the basic bills. No more. "Free" content is of course not free: somebody has to pay the electricity bills for the servers and the staff to post the content, even if it's skimmed from other sites.

In a world of "free" content, why pay for content? Why indeed? There are two reasons: 1) loyalty to the voice provided by the magazine, channel, radio station, newspaper, blog, etc. In some cases, this might be the loyalty of those who love to hear their own views confirmed on a routine basis: the "true believers."

In other cases, the loyalty is for "telling it like it is," even if the positions don't always align with the readers' own views.

Reason Two is that the publication/channel/station is indispensible: everyone who is anyone reads it/watches it/listens to it.

What makes a media outlet indispensible? One, it is skeptical about received wisdom and official explanations, and two, it has a strong and unique voice. Please tell me there is any corporate media that meets these standards. Perhaps on a good day, here and there, but consistently? No.

The "liberal" media parrots the same old tiresome Keynesian blather that we need to borrow another $10 trillion, oh heck, make it $20 trillion or $100 trillion, because we need to pay our teachers and cops a living wage, unions are the backbone of the country, all we need to do is tax the top 1% and all our problems will be solved, etc.

The "conservative" media parrots the same old tiresome corporate welfare blather that we need a strong defense, never mind the cost, cutting taxes is the solutions to all our problems, so while we wait for that magic to work we have to borrow another $10 trillion, oh heck, make it $20 trillion or $100 trillion, and government shouldn't be intrusive unless it's enforcing our standards on everyone else, and then Central State tyranny is "morally necessary."

All corporate media reprints Central State propaganda with only the faintest mewling skepticism. You want an example? The media broadcast or headline blares: "Unemployment down as economy recovers."

If there was any skepticism left, and even the faintest shred of principled devotion to truth, the headline should read "Government spins unemployment numbers again, keeps pushing propaganda." We all know that's the reality, the truth, that the unemployment statistics are doctored, tweaked and massaged to play the same message again and again: "unemployment" is down, never mind it's because we removed 4 million people from the workforce; the economy is recovering because if you stop believing that, you might rise up against the Status Quo.

The corporate media is fatally timid because it's running scared. The focus is on profits that must be made and shipped to restive shareholders and managers, and on keeping a job to pay the mortgage.

The grand irony is the solution to decline is to stand for something other than corporate profits. Have you read what passes for "editorials" in the corporate media? The same old cliches are trotted out, the same bland milktoast "positions" that mean nothing, say nothing, signify nothing but complicity and surrender: the government should keep spending until we get out of recession, or the government should spend responsibly, blah blah blah.

In other words, let's play "journalism" not as if it mattered, but as a game where the "winners" attract more eyeballs and clicks with eye-catching lists and low-cut blouses, and snagging adverts is the only real goal.

Yes, there are adverts on this very blog. But I don't cater to whomever is paying Google to place their adverts; the adverts are displayed based on your preferences as much as on the content of today's entry. I don't change the content based on whether I get adverts or not. Nothing is "free," and somebody is paying the bills somewhere. The adverts help, but they have zero influence over the content. If they went away the content would slog on because it's what's important, and what counts.

I pay for subscriptions to various independent magazines, and donate to support independent blogs and online publications, because my money is a "vote" for skeptical, investigative media. If I don't "vote" for that kind of media, it will fade, because there is no such thing as "free." The home office has to be paid for, the servers must be paid for, the time must be compensated in a way that the "content producer" can buy groceries and trips to the dentist, etc.

But the way to build loyalty is to stand for something, not just repeat government propaganda and tired cliches that were drained of all meaning a generation ago.

You're full of shit, you don't get paid handsomely. Your model is weak and losing steam, so you gotta pander to advertisers to pay your bills. You're running scared.

My local paper consists of 40% being real estate ads. Not ONCE has there ever been an article on how bad the housing sector is, or how much prices have fallen. The paper has been taken over by the scummy property pimps, whose only objective is churn and commission.

The print model is dead. How many times a day does the Washington Post print edition get updated with breaking news? Never. It's done. It's dead. ZH has more new posts in an hour than WaPo does in a week. It's a failed media model that is being raped by the advertisers because WaPo needs to stay afloat.

Ive been telling my dad forever to stop getting newspapers delivered and just read the internet its 100X better. Still stuck in those old-school ways though, cant get up in the morning if theres not a cup of coffee and newspapers there to junk up the place with irrelevant nonsense. But that generation considers the print media 'real news', very hard cycle to break it will just have to die off by itself.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but to date we have found no evidence that he said or wrote this. Its true origins are uncertain, but the saying may have entered popular culture during the Vietnam era.

The earliest usage of the phrase we have found is in a 1961 publication, The Use of Force in International Affairs: "If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?"[1]

The phrase was used repeatedly during the Vietnam era, and this may be when it came into general currency. On October 15, 1969, in a speech at Columbia University, Mayor John Lindsay of New York City stated, "We cannot rest content with the charge from Washington that this peaceful protest is unpatriotic...The fact is that this dissent is the highest form of patriotism."[2]

FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker is leaving the FCC to become a lobbyist for Comcast – just four months after she voted to approve the Comcast-NBC merger.1

This is just the latest – but perhaps most blatant — example of so-called "public servants" cashing in on companies they are supposed to be regulating. But Baker's jump to Comcast is particularly egregious. As recently as March, the commissioner was giving speeches complaining that the Comcast-NBC deal "took too long."

Congress is already concerned about how the FCC conducts itself. Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been making a lot of noise recently about alleged ethical violations at the agency. By signing this letter to Congressman Issa, you’re urging him to launch an investigation of Commissioner Baker’s seemingly blatant conflict of interest.

Outside of Washington, people of every political stripe have expressed near unanimous contempt for a system of government that favors powerful corporations at the expense of the many. Sadly, the complete capture of government by industry barely raises an eyebrow inside the Beltway anymore. That’s why Congress needs to hear from you.

Who needs MSM and their dumbing down and lies when you have Zerohedge ?

Not only is the infomation here much more precise, more detailed and more challenging to the sad status quo by attacking the fraud, lies and theft by the big corporations and the central banks, but also is there no pathetic censorship to free speech, which is really great.

You can watch CNBS lamenting its ratings getting worse. They are constantly dumbing down their content (yeah, I know its hard to dumb it down much more, but at one time they did seem more than just cheerleaders and were helpful at breaking stories). The problem to me is that they are so stupid, people who care about the markets can no longer tolerate watching them, and the people who don't care about markets just don't care enough to watch it, no matter how dumbed down it is. So they are catering to some non existant audience - those who care enough about the markets to want to watch, but too stupid to realize they aren't getting any useful information.

Media is dead because theyre now just another branch of the corrupt govt and the bankster puppet masters carrying their water buckets. Dont whine about it media, you chose your side, dug your own grave, now you lie in it. Used to be a time the media EXPOSED corruption in govt, now theyre just puppets themselves.

The media has always been a show business to a certain extent, always looking for a plane crash or whatever for the 6 oclock news, but how anyone can deny the total shift to total statism propaganda and puppet journalism recently has got to have blinders on.

Okay - OT but I'm hearing that Federal tax receipts were way up yoy in April (lower budget deficit). Trying to get a better sense of the validity of this claim. Are state sales taxes showing a similiar jump? Or are we being gamed in front of the debt ceiling debate to further the meme that the current policies are now working and should be allowed to do their magic.

However, I don't want to completely overrule the possibility that tax receipts were actually organically up (not my base case but I'm a big fan of reality regardless).

Or, just watch old episodes of the (corporate-bought and then locked away for good) 'Frontline' TV show on DVD if you can find it. So successful for its three years of runtime that Aussie MSM Channel Seven bought it and vaulted it in 1995 or thereabouts, never to be shown on air again.

i am sure these factors play into the obsequiousness of news agencies but it should also be noted that the cia rules them with an iron fist....nyt or washington post is no different than pravda or izvestia....state run media is the usa....corpporations - l'etat c'est moi

Immediately after its creation, one of the CIA's first acts is the launching of an illegal war against the citizens of the United States which it calls, ironically, Project Mockingbird.

Mockingbird is designed to deceive and manipulate the American public by controlling the content of American newspapers, magazines, books, movies and the broadcast media.

A secret CIA memo unearthed by the Church Committee in 1975 says that “newsmen are cheaper to buy than a callgirl”.

CIA documents reveal that more than four hundred American journalists are on the CIA payroll.

Among senior mass media executives who are CIA assets are CBS president William Paley,

CBS News President Sig Mickelson, who will later be president of the CIA propaganda fronts, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty,

Time Magazine owner Henry Luce,

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and James Copley of Copley News Service.

The “liberal” New York Times will provides cover for CIA agents since 1950.

Project Mockingbird is headed by Rockefeller cousin, Nazi shyster and Hitler Project organizer Allen Dulles with the help of Frank Wisner, Richard Helms and Philip Graham, a graduate of the U.S. Army Intelligence School and publisher of the "liberal" Washington Post.

The Post itself becomes the CIA's premier media asset.

Eventually, the CIA’s media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service and more. By the CIA’s own admission, at least twenty five major media organizations are direct CIA assets.

In reality, virtually the entire U.S. mass media apparatus is nothing more or less than a gigantic propaganda and disinformation machine masquerading as a free press.

"Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretence that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth."

Mark Crispin Miller

In the same way as the revolving door between the U.S. government and the arms industry, a revolving door operates between the CIA and the mass media.

CIA Director Richard Helms was a United Press International correspondent, CIA Director William Casey was the major shareholder of the owner of the ABC television network, Capital Cities.

Journalists Edward R. Murrow and Carl Rowan both worked as Directors of the CIA front U.S. Information Agency.

NBC news anchor John Chancellor was a director of the CIA’s radio propaganda network, Voice of America. CBS Vice President Joseph H. Ream is a former deputy director of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Outside the U.S., the CIA has en extraordinary web of media assets with which to deceive, manipulate and misinform the people of the world.

Among the more important CIA fronts are/were Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty (Cuba) and Radio Free Asia.

The interesting thing about this Nazi bastard child CIA is that the way it was financed with stolen Japanese gold. Of course the Japanese stole the gold from China and a dozen odd other Asian countries, but still the capital to build this entire house of cards was based on massive amounts of gold. What does that say about the true value of precious metals?

This book is earth-shattering and faith-shaking, a well-documented tale of deceit at the highest levels of the US government. So controversial and potentially explosive are the findings of this book, to wit, that the White House recovered most of the Nazi and Japanese loot and created a secret slush fund for covert political operations world-wide, that the authors go the extra mile and offer, at a nominal price, two CD-ROMS containing 60,000 pages of supporting documentation including the Japanese treasure maps used by the US to recover the gold and other valuables.

Major players include Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Nixon, both Allen and John Foster Dulles, Douglas MacArthur, John McCloy, and the famous unconventional warrior Edward Lansdale. What we learn from this book is that those writing about "blowback" (the consequences of unwise US actions) have barely scratched the surface. What we learn is that rather than truly seeking to help the Japanese, Chinese, and other looted nations recover in the aftermath of WWII, the most senior leaders of the US government, no doubt with the best of intentions, actually conspired with Nazi bankers and the Japanese imperial family to create a Black Eagle Trust controlled by a very select hand-picked cabal in Washington.

Beginning in the 1930s, Japan loots much of Asia of gold, precious stones, art and cultural treasures. Government treasuries, banks, factories, homes and art galleries are emptied of their valuables. Gold fillings are hammered from the teeth of corpses. The looting is under the control of Emperor Hirohito's brother, Prince Chichibu and the operation is called Golden Lily.

Japan's foremost gangster, Kodama Yoshio, is made a rear admiral and is Chichibu's man on the ground. For years, the stolen loot is transported to Japan where some is used to pay for Japan's imperial wars but most ends up in the hands of the Japanese ruling elite including members of the imperial family and various other gangsters.

Towards the end of the war, when the U.S. submarine blockade stops the loot being carried to Japan, vast amounts of stolen wealth, worth about a hundred billion dollars, are accumulated by the Japanese in the occupied Philippines. The sheer volume of the loot staggers the imagination; hundreds of tons of gold, hundreds of thousands of carats of diamonds, tens of thousands of works of art.

Slave laborers and Japanese engineers build a massive complex of underground tunnels and bunkers in the Philippines to store the loot and are then murdered by being buried alive in the complex, leaving only a handful of senior Japanese officers under General Tomoyuki Yamashita with knowledge of the secret.

Following the capture of the Philippines by the U.S., American military intelligence officers torture Yamashita's driver until he reveals where he had driven Yamashita near the end of the war. The U.S. military begins the retrieval of the Golden Lily loot.

The stolen wealth is not returned to its rightful owners, nor is it used to pay reparations to the countries devastated by Japan nor is it used to pay compensation to the prisoners of war abused by Japan.

Instead, the U.S. government, taking the moral high ground as usual, decides to steal the stolen loot. It sets up a team to launder the loot into two hundred separate bank accounts to be used to finance death squads, purchase perjured testimony, carry out terror attacks and subvert democracy in Japan and around the world under the guise of fighting the evil commies.

In Japan, the U.S. directs the loot into three separate funds. All are intended to re-establish control of Japan by the same right wing, banking and corporate interests which had driven Japan into war in the first place but, this time, beholden to the U.S.

The Yotsuya Fund is under the control of General Douglas MacArthur’s right hand man, Charles Willoughby (born in Germany as Adolf Tscheppe-Weidenbach, believe it or not) an ultra fascist, monocle-wearing certifiable loony, an admirer of Francisco Franco, the recipient of an award from Benito Mussolini and the boss of U.S. Army Intelligence, G-2, in Japan.

Willoughby oversees the death squads operated on behalf of the U.S. by gangster and unprosecuted war criminal Kodama Yoshio which carry out assassinations of student leaders, liberals, leftists, union leaders, journalists and others who dare to question the creation of a right wing Japanese puppet state by the U.S.

The second fund, known as the Keenan Fundafter Joseph Keenan, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Tokyo war crimes trials, is used to bribe witnesses at the trials. The perjured testimony is used to exonerate those Japanese war criminals who are now in bed with MacArthur and the U.S., including members of the imperial family and other gangsters including Kodama Yoshio.

The Keenan Fund is also used to bribe witnesses to purchase perjered testimony relating to Japan's chemical and biological warfare program so that the information can be kept secret for exclusive use by the U.S. Surrounding the Tokyo trials, there are sudden, violent deaths and suspicious suicides of those who apparently resisted bribes from the Keenan Fund.

The stolen billions in the Yotsuya and Keenan funds will eventually be combined into the so-called M-Fund, which is of such staggering magnitude that it will account for ten percent of Japan's Gross National Product by 1950. The M-Fund will be used to subvert democracy in Japan through massive interference in the political process.

For the indefinite future, by financing the deceptively named ultra right wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which faithfully serves the interests of the Japanese and American ruling classes, the M-fund will ensure a pro-corporate, U.S.-compliant regime in Japan. The M-Fund will also be used to finance the official history of the Japanese defeat. It is easily imagined how accurate that is.

The end result is that Japan is very soon right back in business, firmly in the hands of the industialists and financial moguls who had raped and looted their way through Asia for decades. And they can stay in power as long long as they do what the U.S. says.

Outside Japan, the Golden Lily billions, along with loot stolen by the Nazis and stolen for a second time by the U.S., are used to subvert democracy and finance so-called "black ops" around the world. The operation is called Black Eagle.

When the CIA under Nazi shyster Allen Dulles begins dipping into the loot, they will use it to subvert democracy by manipulating elections in Italy, France, Great Britain, Greece and Japan among other places, to fund the puppet dictator of U.S.-invented "South" Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and to finance an endless stream of propaganda and disinformation during the so-called Cold War and CIA-directed campaigns of terror including the one against Nicaragua in the 1980s.

In the late 1960s, the U.S. puppet dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, will recover a further fourteen billions dollars worth of Golden Lily loot. With the kind assistance of the CIA, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy, the loot will be carried to the CIA's network of money laundering banks around the world.

The use of the Japanese and Nazi loot by the U.S. government in its covert war against the rest of the world goes on to the present day.

In the 1990s, William "Slick Willy" Clinton will allow the CIA to remove documents on Golden Lily from newly declasssified government documents.

There are reports that more of the stolen gold is recovered from the Philippines by the regime of George "I'm A Lyin' Guy" Bush.

the mass media has always served a higher master. noam chomsky's "manufacturing consent", ben bagdikian's "the new media monopoly" and edward herman's "the myth of the liberal media" all address this same topic with great clarity and illumination.